


There's Room For More Than One Person On This Damn Ship: Neil/Violet, A Manifesto

by Ashling



Category: Watching the Detectives (2007)
Genre: Canon Primer, F/M, I said what I said.gif, Meta, Romantic Comedy, Ship Manifesto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-13 16:06:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: As far as I know, there is only one reason that anyone ever can, should, or will watch this movie, for other than one shining quality (which literally no other movie has), Watching The Detectives has nothing to recommend it...And yet, here I am, hat in hand, asking for fanfic of this movie.If you like romcoms, Lucy Liu, Cillian Murphy, and/or salvaging jewels from wreckage, this one's for you.





	There's Room For More Than One Person On This Damn Ship: Neil/Violet, A Manifesto

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowersforgraves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/gifts).

> thanks for running unconventional fanworks exchange! it's fantastic fun
> 
> gifs not mine, used with permission from [shesnake](https://shesnake.tumblr.com/tagged/watching+the+detectives)

As far as I know, there is only one reason that anyone ever can, should, or will watch this movie, for other than one shining quality (which literally no other movie has), _ Watching The Detectives _ has nothing to recommend it. It is utterly irrelevant. Made in 2007 with a budget of two million dollars in return for a fifteen thousand dollar box office release, it was a critical flop, and aside from a handful of gifs on tumblr and a very specific place in my heart, it has generated no fandom. Its cinematography is best described as bog standard. Plot? Nearly nonexistent. Concept? Manic pixie dreamgirl, period. Dialogue? Downright appalling. At times I feel certain I would be better off watching the thing on mute

And yet, here I am, hat in hand, asking for fanfic of this movie. This movie, whose copyright is so worthless that it is not available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or any significant streaming service. This movie, whose copyright is so worthless that it has been made [ available on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZWMtYUglco) by a fan, whose complete complacency about the Youtube rule enforcers has been justified by that fan being left in peace ever since they uploaded it all the way back in 2008. This movie, which barely merits the name “movie” at all. _ This _movie.

Yes, here I am.

And here they are:

That is a lot of gifs, yes, but without giving you visuals I’m completely unable to convey the single good thing that  _ Watching The Detectives _ has: Lucy Liu and Cillian Murphy in a romcom together.

That is it. That is all. And for me, that is enough. I wish I could say that the chemistry of their characters is delicious throughout, but in several scenes, I can’t even say that, because Murphy’s dubious slacker everyman character is sometimes forced to play the comedic straight man, trying to keep a lid on Liu’s quirky, crazy girlfriend, that it sometimes smothers their actual chemistry. Which, when it appears, is  _ good. _

Lucy Liu shines from start to finish in a role that would have been cheap or contrived coming from an actress with even an ounce less of charisma. But she pulls it off with charm to spare, her face, her eyes especially, alight with mischief. She’s so good, I could watch her concocting outlandish schemes for another hour, or two, or three, even though her every antic is so clearly contrived by a writer whose idea of a romcom is merely scribbling the words “Manic Pixie Dreamgirl” on a saucepan with pink Sharpie and then walloping the viewer over the head with it. 

You’ve seen actors called “transcendent” in reviews before, but that tribute has been mostly given to them for acting out meaty roles in films directed, written, and edited by people who possessed more than the bare minimum of competence. “Transcendent”, in this context, is merely something film critics say when they really mean “very very good” but can’t say it, because that wouldn’t help them meet their quota of polysyllabic words per article.

At long last, I have seen an actress that deserves the word. Because this is truly the off-brand Velveeta of scripts, and Lucy Liu fucking  _ transcends  _ it.

This is what I mean when I say that at times I feel certain I would be better off watching the thing on mute. It’s not just an insult to the writing; it’s a tribute to the sheer vitality of Lucy Liu, who is worth watching even without dialogue. She plays Violet not merely as a flat cliché, but as a free-spirited, reckless, weird, mildly criminal, and deeply lovable woman.

And let’s be frank, Cillian Murphy is a damn good actor; he more than holds his own in other movies, even those where he’s a secondary character (see: Inception). Just like Lucy Liu, he’s given gorgeously textured, powerhouse performances in other works. But here, he’s fighting a script that doesn’t give his character, Neil, many sympathetic qualities or nuances to set him apart from a generic slacker. At best, Neil is passionate about movies, level-headed enough to know when Violet’s going too far, and fairly good with babies. He’s also got a wonderful, goofy smile that lights up his eyes, but there’s not as much of that as I would like, since so often he’s thinking about other things as he smiles, like how to stop Violet from causing too much damage, or how to figure out more information about her (since she’s Very Mysterious at first), et cetera. In a better world, we'd get a script that better captures Cillian's performance of Neil as a mix of sweet, awkward, geeky, and extremely cautious.

  


Some of the best moments of the movie occur when he decides to let loose a little and actually admit to enjoying the wild stuff that Violet wants to do, like when the two of them go to his competitor’s store and mess around with the DVDs before running away from the cops. (Oh, yeah, Neil owns a small movie rental store and his competitor is basically Blockbuster. It was made in 2007. People drove around in carts and buggies then.)

Probably the best Neil moment is when he forgets about what he wants from Violet (information about her, the promise of another date, sex with her, trying to make her not get them both in trouble), and focuses on what he wants to give to her and what he wants to do with her. He finds out she previously dated a musician and liked it, so he dresses up as a rock star and lip synchs to an audience of paper cutouts. He fully surrenders to the ridiculousness of it all. Maybe it starts as something purely for her benefit, but by the end of it, he’s definitely having a good time, and it ends up being one of the most thoroughly funny, sexy, enjoyable scenes in the whole damn romcom. I wish we could’ve seen more of that Neil. He was awesome.

I suppose I should tell you something about the plot, but really all you need to know is this: girl meets boy, girl and boy go on a series of misadventures, mostly in which girl is going wild while boy is half-worried, half-enjoying it. There’s a few perfect scenes worthy of a far better romcom. There’s chemistry and acting absolutely worthy of a far better romcom. Girl dumps boy for no reason. Boy cries while doing every normal human activity for the next two weeks, which is a bit of slapstick that yours truly physically laughed at. Girl reappears with a “sorry“ box of chocolates. Girl and boy come to an understanding about their relationship and embark on an impulsive road trip that signals a happily ever after.

If that sounds relentlessly heteronormative, I’m sorry, so is the movie. But dammit, there was so much potential wasted here, with just enough of it peeking through to send me into an absolute batshit “write a thousand words that only three people will ever read” frenzy. It’s like someone threw a bunch of seeds onto salted land and only one flower grew, but holy fuck, THAT FLOWER. It’s worthy of so much more.

And isn’t that what fanfiction is for?


End file.
